Giovanni Manfredini is an Italian sculptor who was born in 1963. Manfredini currently lives and works in Modena. Giovanni Manfredini is convinced that the basic aim of art is a process of self-awareness in which aesthetic inquiry manages to possess the individual for what it is in itself. He alters the relationship between the elements and disregards that eternal conflict between nature and artifice, the alien and the alienated, metaphor and metastasis that characterize a large part of contemporary inquiries. Obviously he does not oppose this, but he thinks of it as something that is already part of a debate leading to a different approach, one that is more linguistic in character. In fact Manfredini begins with a different aim and considers the body, his own body, as a subject worthy of inquiry in itself. Contemplation no longer exists, only action in a synergetic exchange with the surface which absorbs and, at the same time, emanates energy. The artist prepares his canvasses with an experimental technique mixing natural elements, an impasto of vinyl glue, water, and crushed shells. This mixture, worthy of the proto-chemist he is, is dried and 'painted' with smoke and fire which completely cover the available space until it is uniform. It is now ready to receive the indelible imprint. So the canvas becomes the place where the work is absorbed as part of a physical process of visualization, and where the support participates directly in the creative transformation.
Giovanni Manfredini has held solo exhibitions in Madrid, Naples, Milan, Rome, Berlin, Basel, Bern, London, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and collective exposure such as the 54th Venice Biennale, PS1 in New York, and the Stedelijk Museum SMAK in Gand. His works are exhibited alongside those of Caravaggio in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome, a large triptych at Kaiserdome Frankfurt, and are in many private and public collections among the others at the Stuttgart Kunsthalle, Kunstmuseum in Bonn, SMAK in Gand, Fukuyama Museum of Art, Japan, Modern Art Gallery of Bologna, and the MART in Trento and Rovereto.
He is represented by the Gallery Henze Ketterer & Triebold in Bern, Galerie Rother Winter in Wiesbaden, Mimmo Scognamiglio in Milan, and by D406 gallery in Modena.
For additional information about this artist, visit Mutual Art
